The invention relates to a device for gripping the opposed ends of an endless traveling belt such as a dryer felt at a hinged seam thereof holding together the opposed ends so that a connecting rod may be inserted through the hinge.
Normally, the dryer felts are extremely wide, such as thirty feet, and travel over guide rollers in paper-making machinery or the like. The endless dryer felts are formed by providing a hinged seam which transverses the entire width of the felt. The conventional hinged seam includes a number of side-by-side wire loops extending from the two ends to be joined, with the loops on one end staggered and interleaved with respect to those on the opposed end. A connecting rod is inserted through the interleaved loops, across the entire width of the felt, to form the hinge pivot. The opposed ends of the dryer felt must be joined together by inserting the connecting rod through the hinge while the felts are on the guide rollers of the machine and often while the rollers are hot.
In addition, the wire loops which rotate about the connecting rod cause severe surface abrasion both of the rod and of the wire loops themselves. This seriously decreases the useful life of the hinged seam and precipitates the danger of failure during operation. Such a failure could cause collapse of the dryer felt into the paper machine basement with possible damage to other dryer felts on the same machine during the fall. Accordingly, to alleviate the problem of the relatively short life of the hinged seam, it is desirable to inspect and replace the connecting rod frequently. This presents a burdensome problem in that the opposed ends of the felt must be held in place expediently while the connecting rod is inserted in place.
Devices have been developed for drawing seam edges together such as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,300,181. However, such devices are for use in repairing carpet seams and employ a rather sophisticated lever mechanism which would be rather cumbersome and impractical to use on dryer felt seams. Another problem with such devices is that they would not operate on a curved surface such as when a seam is located over a roller.